Amplified Clippers Drive Noisy ‘Electric Chaircut’

Hair-cutter Nelson Loskamp makes music, but we’re not talking about the quaint sounds of a barbershop quartet. Loskamp’s “original amplified haircut” turns a salon visit into sonic mayhem as he runs the tools of his trade through guitar effects pedals that let him manipulate the machine sounds.

During Loskamp’s Electric Chaircut performances, subjects are strapped to the chair, their eyes and mouth taped shut. Then Loskamp takes over.

“Scissors and clippers wired to effects pedals and slung ’round my waist are blasted through an amplifier strapped to my back,” he writes on his website. “I whack at the hair in a seemingly random pattern and a cacophony of trancelike sounds play to the audience. When I am finished, I peel away the tape and show [the subject] the new look I have created.”

Self-taught barber Loskamp notes that hair is a perfect medium for his bizarre music project: “This powerful symbol, which grows from our heads, is temporary and regenerative, which allows us to experiment with it, change it and change who we are.”

The Electric Chaircut will be performed Sundays this month at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York. Noise-music fans with a taste for sonic disturbances can listen to the amplified haircut (.mp3) or watch the video below of Loskamp in action.